Hi forum,

I am thinking about starting a non-profit health education app targeting developing countries audiences. As limesurvey is open source and I think you have a nice forum, I would like to ask you how open source projects like yours are organized? Most importantly is the cost question: Do you need full-time developers for this or is it possible that the community develops it for free?

thanks in advance for your tipps!

 

Before starting a opensource project you might contribute to other opensource projects first. Just to learn what issues a open source project has to cope with and how people interact. There is no "the community". There are people which might share some goals and have their own goals. "The community" will not develop the app. You need to find and convince individuals to share the goal of developing a health education app for non profit. You might start with writing a proposal about what problem the app should solve and ask around, if such an app is already existing or in the making. LimeSurvey might not be a suitable role model for your idea. Nobody can answer that question till you a proposal of your idea. If you want to code on your own, you might start with a simple version of the app. If you cannot code, you will need to find people and explain your idea to them first. LimeSurvey development is steered by a profit-company. There is no committee where people outside the company can influence the development. You can look at other projects for different concepts. E.g. Joomla , where no company is directly owning the brand or the development process.

thanks for the quick reply!

The proposal is this:
There should be video lectures teaching health knowledge about the most important topcs. (Focussed on low cost health prevention knowledge).
At the end of each lecture there should be a quiz to test the knowledge.
The app should be provided in a few main languages and then the community can help to translate in all the various languages that are needed.

During a time there are only one really full time developer, but now :
I think there are more than 4 full time developer at LimeSurvey GMBH + 2 near full time external developper.